High Performance Building Experience

As an Associate at Heintges & Associates, a building envelope and curtain wall consulting firm in New York, Samina contributed to the design and execution of several award-winning buildings. Her work included structural analysis, thermal analysis, enclosure detailing, material selection, performance testing, and site and factory inspections, which gave her in-depth experience with high performance facades.

To translate her knowledge from the larger institutional, commercial and civic projects to residential and small commercial projects, Samina obtained her Certified Passive House Consultant designation Passive House Institute US in 2016. Whether or not a building is certified as a Passive House project, Samina aims to use these critical principles to help clients make their homes and businesses more energy efficient.

The dynamic 44,000 sq. ft. facade of this seven-story student center at Barnard College in NYC helps achieve the private public concept by incorporating the innovative first use in the U.S. of acid etch on #1 surface of glass, patterned ceramic frit, and copper anodized spandrel. Samina facilitated visual mock-ups and material selection, reviewed shop drawings and fabrication, witnessed and analyzed performance mock-up testing, and oversaw and performed inspections of the entire installation, coordinating with the contractor for troubleshooting, water testing and final project closeout.

Winner of AIA Institute National Honor Award, AIA Best Building in New York State Award, AIA NYS Award of Excellence, The Chicago Athenaeum Green Architecture Green Good Design Award.

This academic and studio building at Pratt was the first academic building to achieve LEED Gold Certification in Brooklyn. Two distinct wall types differentiate the public facade from the campus facade, with a floor-through atrium space. Within the 43,500 sq. ft. of facade, selective use of ceramic frit on glass and exterior sunshades contribute to overall building performance. As the facade project manager from the early design phases through construction administration and project closeout, Samina helped to design a material and structural strategy, performed thermal analysis, developed contract drawings and specifications, reviewed shop drawings and oversaw mock-up testing, fabrication and installation.

At this immense performance complex in Washington, D.C., 90,000 sq. ft. of new inclined and curved glass and timber cable wall facade unifies existing theaters with new theater spaces, creating a new event space out of the circulation spaces. The facade is hung by cables from a unifying cantilever roof and is supported against wind forces by branches of the primary timber structure. For this challenging installation, Samina performed a detailed analysis of live loads to coordinate the installation sequence between the aluminum and glass glazed system to the timber and cable structural system. She also conducted a finite-element analysis to understand the interactions between the wind load deflections of the facade and the structure to ensure that the structure did not introduce excessive stresses into the facade. Samina designed solutions at tricky wall system intersections and geometries and reviewed shop drawings as well as testing and installation.